The silent fortress
by My Deliah
Summary: John suddenly awakes in a mental alysum along with some old friends, who at first don't recognize him, or eachother. No one in here has heard of mutants. The group befriends Eleanor and slowly begin to discover the horrible secret of Wembley Mental Asylum
1. Chapter 1: The awakening

_**The silent fortress**_

_**Chapter 1**_

He woke up, cold and stiff. Slowly tearing one eye open, he wondered why it was so cold here, and went on to ponder about where exactly _here _was. Both eyes open, he noticed that his breath formed small puffs of white smoke. It wasn't just cold, it was freezing in here.

He sat up on the cold bed and looked around him. The place was small with concrete walls, a damp smell lay in the air. There were no windows, only one door. It reminded him of a cell. Not that he'd ever seen the inside of a cell before, but he'd seen many movies, and all cells seemed to look like this room.

"What the hell is this?" 

He got up on his feet, flinched as his feet touched the surface of the floor. His body was stiff, but not soar. His first thought had been that he must be in a prison cell, captured for the things he did at Alcatraz, but it couldn't be it. He remembered the punch Bobby had given him, but there was no bump on his head, not a cut, not a single bruise on his body.

Slowly he walked to the door and looked out the window. There seemed to be some sort of corridor outside, but no people. The empty hall was gray and sterile, and there was a complete silence inside his cell, it was too silent. He felt the panic rise in his throat, he didn't like this, something was very wrong here. He fumbled with his hands in an attempt to find the handle, but there was none. Then he whirled around and searched for something to smash the glass with, but there was nothing. Everything in the room was either screwed to the floor or to the wall. There was a toilet in the back at the right, a chair and a bed.

Frightened he turned to the door again and pressed his face against the glass. There was still no one outside. There were doors at the opposite wall, metal doors with small windows. He looked as far to the left as he could, but the other cells were quiet and undisturbed. He looked at each empty window, again wondering where he was. Then he came to the door right in front of his. He thought he could see a faint silhouette in the shadows.

"**Hey**!" He shouted and banged with his closed fists on the door. "**Hey you, help! Help! What is this place? Can you hear me?! Help!!**" He hammered on the door with his closed fists, but the person didn't seem to react at all. Maybe he or she was also locked in, but why didn't he or she react? He thrust his right shoulder against the door, but it didn't budge one bit. Then he turned round and with two long strides reached the bed where he began to rip out the sheets. He went on to tearing out the mattress, and ripped a hole in it, spreading the feathers all around the cell. The panic and fury throbbed inside his mind. They couldn't do this to him, why, why was this happening?

Suddenly the door slammed open and three men grabbed him from the back, throwing him to the floor.

"Now, do it now!" one of the med panted, and then he felt a sting in his left arm and the world began to blur.

He woke in complete darkness. Getting up he began to run his hands over the walls, hoping to find anything, a light switch, a handle, anything. Finally his hands touched cold, hard metal, a door. But there was no window this time; he was locked in a room with complete darkness. Sobbing from tension and helplessness he sunk to the floor with his face touching the cool metal.

They didn't come to get him for several hours, and when they came they threatened to sedate him if he tried anything. There were three men and one woman dressed in white. Their uniforms resembled a doctor's, but not quite. Their badges said dr. Bailey, dr. Cook and dr. Silver. The last one had no badge, but he had knits with keys hanging from his belt, he was looking rather nervous.

They took him to a room with a table and two chairs, one on either side of the table. He sat down on one side, and dr. Silver on the other. Silver was the female doctor, a beautiful woman in her mid-thirties with dark hair and brown orbs.

"Mr Allerdyce" she said. "Yesterday you wrecked your cell and forced us to sedate you. Why did you do that?" She asked the last thing very slowly with a reassuring tone, as if to calm him down.

"I woke up in a cell, locked from the outside with no one around, why do you think I wrecked my cell?!" His voice became louder and louder the more he spoke. He felt a sudden urge to flick his lighter and burn her, burn this whole place down. They couldn't do this to him.

"John, we have discussed this with you before…"

"What do you mean with 'we have discussed this before'? Where the hell am I?" he interrupted.

"You are still at Wembley Psychiatric Hospital, just like you were yesterday."

"An asylum, they sent me to a nuthouse?" He laughed, this was ridiculous.

"John" she said, trying to get his attention though his hysterical laughter. "John, who are these people you are talking about?"

He ignored her question.

"If they sent me here, then what did they do with all the other mutants?"

"What mutants?" dr. Silver asked him. She didn't seem to be lying, but he saw no interest or surprise in her either. He got a feeling she didn't take him seriously.

"Magneto, Juggernaut, the rest of the Brotherhood?" he exclaimed, aggravated by her lack blank face.

"They are mutants?"

He nodded confirming.

"Can you describe a mutant for me John?"

"They are ordinary people with a mutation in the X-gene!" he exclaimed frustrated. She nodded slowly.

"I see, and what exactly makes these people special?"

"You don't know that? Seriously, what are you people? Didn't they tell you anything? We are people with superhuman powers. There are the Xaviers team, the X-men, and then there was the Brotherhood. We destroyed Alcatraz remember?"

"I see, and you are one of these mutants?"

"Well duh, yeah I'm the one who controls fire, Pyro, remember?"

She nodded slowly again and stared at him intensely. Then she brought her hands together and crossed her fingers.

"And that's why you were carrying the lighter when you came here?"

"Yes!" He growled. This was getting tiresome, and how the hell could she be so ignorant of the outside world.

"And who are the other people you are talking about, the ones you address as them?"

"The government of course, they were the ones who wanted to extinct us by using the cure!"

There was a pause in which she seemed to be thinking closely.

"I understand." Then she threw a glance at her wristwatch. "I'm sorry, but that's all time we have for today." She got to her feet and was preparing to leave the room. Pyro jumped to his feet.

"Hey wait a minute, what will happen to me? I'm not going back to that cell again! This is ridiculous, I'm not insane, you must have heard about mutants!" He shouted and prepared to run after and grab her. Strong hands grabbed him from behind before he got a chance to however.

"Calm down kid or we'll throw you back into isolation."

He calmed down and they led him back to his cell. He comforted himself with the thought that Magneto was probably coming to save him soon. They couldn't stop Magneto, no one could, not even Xavier had been able to.

They handed him pills, four of them in different size and shape and watched him closely to make sure he swallowed them.

After that he was taken to a huge room filled with other inmates. They called it the common room, or they playground, a huge concrete room with some chairs, a ping-pong table and pretty much nothing else. The people inside resembled grey ghosts that wandered around. A woman in the back was talking to herself in a low voice, another man was sitting by a table, staring intensely at it. As Pyro passed by him, the man looked up, pointed to the table and said

"Look, you can see them right?"

He hurried on, and then he spotted someone sitting by the window, a girl in his age group. He headed to her. As she heard him approach, she lifted her eyes and stared at him. He noticed the other prisoners distanced themselves from her, and he wondered why, she seemed harmless.

"Hi there" he said, but she didn't respond. He eyes were dimmed by heavy medications and she had dark shades under her eyes. She looked very worn, as if se was an old woman, instead of a young girl. "Um, I'm John" he continued, also this time without her responding.

"What's your name?"

Her eyes focused on him suddenly with piercing intensity. She flinched and blinked one, twice and then slightly shook her head as if to rid of a hallucination.

"Elleanor…" she whispered. "Alessa Jones."

"Elleanor, you've heard of mutants right?" He tried to make contact with her by forcing her to look him in the eye, "Right?" He asked pleadingly.

She looked down on the floor, wrapped her arms around her knees and rested her chin against her knees. She began to sway, back and forth, back and forth.

"You are insane." She whispered in a tiny voice.

"No, no I'm not. This is all a mistake, I'm not insane, I do not belong here" he replied frantically and felt the fear come crawling again. Did they really believe that he was a nutcase?

"Oh but you are, we _all_ are." She smiled mystically.


	2. Chapter 2: The new patient

**All the voices within**

**Chapter 3**

He asked them what medication they were giving him; they didn't answer. Then he wanted to know why he was still in there after yesterday's session, since it should be completely clear to everyone that he was not insane. They didn't reply this time either, they just asked him to swallow his pills.

He hid the medication inside his cheeks, and pretended to swallow them with the water he was given. The two nurses then asked him to open his mouth, and he did so. Obviously they bought his trickery, because they left his cell and locked the door behind them. John looked out through the small glass in the door and saw them walk across the hall to Alyssa's cell. He'd seen them lead her in there after lunch yesterday.

He'd tried to make contact with her during their time yesterday, but the only respond he got was when he asked her for her name. Apart from that, she hadn't said a word to him. Strangely enough, the silence hadn't bothered him, maybe because it hadn't been an awkward silence. The ting that bothered him was that her eyes had looked right through him, as if he wasn't there. He wondered if he even existed inside her world, wherever it might be. Maybe it was the medications who did it, shut her off from the real world… he wondered what they gave her.

His session with dr. Silver today was, if even possible, less beneficial for him than the last one had been. He realized se was taking notes of everything he said, and suddenly a rather nasty little feeling began to root itself inside him. She obviously thought that he was psychotic or something, though she didn't say it out loud, he could see it in her eyes.

"So, this anti-mutant profile the government your speak of has, how does it work?"

"At first it was Senator Kelly who was most devoted on this matter, but after he died others began to follow in his footsteps. Things built up when the cure was created, and it all ended with the destruction of Alcatraz."

"Mr Allerdyce, I'm afraid that this might shock you, but senator Kelly is very much alive, and there has been no attack on Alcatraz."

"That's bullshit, the senator died at Xavier's, and Alcatraz _was _destroyed, I was there for God's sake!" He couldn't hide the aggravation in his voice as he shouted that last part to her.

"I'm sure that some part of you knows that I'm right. These memories you have are nothing more than hallucinations."

He gave up; there was no talking to her. All he said seemed to encourage her idea that he was suffering from psychosis, and she wouldn't listen to the truth when he shouted it to her face. He asked to be led back to his cell, and two nurses escorted him out of the room.

Robert Drake and Peter Rasputin were standing in their corner of the cafeteria room. It was the spot where they sometimes would be able to hear members of the staff talking, and especially, what they were talking about.

Both of the young men knew they were not insane; the only trouble was that everyone else thought they were. All the two of them knew was that one day, they both had woken up in here, confused and alone. They both had vague memories of a past, but it was all a blur, and there was no way to tell what was real and what was not.

You see, both Robert, commonly known as Bobby, and Peter were mutants. They found out about each other's mutation through pure coincidence, and figured it would be good for both of them if they stuck together.

Since this was a closed facility, they weren't allowed to watch TV, or listen to the radio. Books were also banned in here, and though Bobby had never aired his suspicions he figured that book could generate ideas, and ideas were certainly something that was banned in here. You saw people in here who were so medicated that they couldn't think for themselves anymore. Basically their only chance to get to know things was through the staff here at Wembley. There hadn't been any interesting news today, which was odd, there always seemed to be some useful information about the outside world for them, but not today.

Peter gave Bobby a slight nudge on the elbow, and discretely pointed to the common room entrance. It was the new kid, a brown haired guy of average length. Usually none of them would have acknowledged his presence, but there were two things about him that set him aside from the rest of the patients here. He didn't act like an insane person, he seemed perceptive and alert, not hollow and numbed like the rest of them. The other thing was that he'd been sitting with Alessa yesterday, obviously trying to communicate with her. It was, disturbing.

The kid walked pass the other patients without even looking at them, and went straight to the window were Eleanor was seated, her lay folded in her lap and her eyes were staring at the concrete wall. This was how she always sat, and no one ever attempted to disturb, or even approach her, and maybe it was for the better.

Now this kid took a chair and sat down in front of her. Bobby and Peter were close enough to hear what they were saying, not that the girl said much anyway.

"Hi Eleanor" the kid said and waited for her to respond, she didn't. They both recalled dr. Silver talking with a colleague about how she suffered from Alogia, which made it hard for anyone to keep a fluent conversation with her. The kid leaned closer to her and whispered:

"Do you know what medication they are giving us?"

"Yes." She was still staring right through him.

"What are they called?"

"Fluphenazine, Risperidone, Loxapine, Lithium" came her answer. Her voice was numb, emotionless. The kid nodded slightly, obviously clueless about what these medications did to you.

Bobby and Peter threw each other a glance. There was something eerie about Eleanor. They both had a feeling that she was like Pandora's box, plain on the outside, but held the destruction of the world hidden within. Of course, Eleanor wasn't the only eerie thing going on in here. There was something fishy about this place, about the staff and especially the manager of the place, a huge white man with cold blue eyes.

Something was happening here during the night. The floors were vibrating, the nurses who were supposed to watch the prisoners were all absent. Once one of them had left the door at the end of the long corridor open. Through the small glass in his door Bobby could glimpse the open door at the end of the hall. There was light coming from there and something, they didn't know what, but something was making a horrible, inhuman sound. It sounded something like a snake's hissing, and it would go on all night long.

By the window the new guy was still trying to draw information from Eleanor. He leaned closer to her and began whispering.

"Do you know what these medicines do to you?" Eleanor just stared at him instead of answering. John took it as a sign that she didn't know.

"They makes you a zombie, stops you from thinking on your own. You have to stop taking them." She didn't reply, but he knew there was a reply waiting inside of her. Somehow he'd begun to understand how she worked, he didn't know the name of the condition, but he knew that the answers were there inside, you just had to get them out.

"Eleanor, what are you going to do?" Her eyes suddenly fixed on his, the intensity was making him crumble before her.

"I will stop taking my medicines." Then she broke the eye contact again.

Feeling a bit shook up but relieved at the same time, John turned his gaze to the entrance into the 'playgrounds', someone had just passed through the doors and into the room. He choked and began coughing heavily. He knew the person who had just entered, the long hair with the white streaks, the soft eyes.

It was Rogue.


End file.
